The Silence

Silence can be a powerful form of communication. It is often the form that communication takes in the wake of unspeakable trauma. After a half a century, the Holocaust still dominates the homes of survivors and their families. Memory haunts and permeates the home, conditioning survivors' thoughts, their behaviour, their responses to their family, their reactions to government and authority. Applied linguist and academic Dr. Ruth Wajnryb grew up in such a home, living the aftermath of her parents' war as they strove to reconstruct their lives in the wake of a nightmare that could not be talked about. Using interviews with children of survivors, "The Silence" explores the process of communication in survivor families from the perspective of the post-war generation. It maps the interconnections of narrative and trauma, and lays bare the oblique and roundabout pathways where talk fragments and disappears into the cracks. Ruth Wajnryb retrieves the fragments and gives words, meaning and a larger coherence to a silence suffered quietly in countless homes. Along the way, readers learn the author's own story and that of her generation, and understand in a broader sense how trauma is transmitted and how it touches and impacts on talk in families. Understanding the language of silence, she believes, is a first step to healing. "The Silence" is an attempt to understand how trauma and communication interconnect. Given the reality of human exile and uprootedness, communication across the boundaries of culture and trauma is a major social issue of the new millennium.

ISBN 186508512X   Pages 368 ISBN13 9781865085128 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Allen & Unwin   Weight (grammes) 618 Imprint Allen & Unwin   Published in Sydney Format Paperback   Height (mm) 231 Publication date 01 Jun 2001   Width (mm) 152 Library of Congress P95.53.W35   Spine width (mm) 24 DEWEY 616.8521   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC21

1 A personal journey2 The story begins3 The silent aftermath of war4 The context of incommunicability5 Born knowing? The descendants' experience6 Holocaust narrative: a place between speech and silence7 The unspoken text8 Other voices9 An emotional landscapeNotesIndex

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